James Lane Allen (December 21, 1849 – February 18, 1925) was an American novelist and short story writer whose work, including the novel A Kentucky Cardinal, often depicted the culture and dialects of his native Kentucky. His work is characteristic of the late-19th century local color era, when writers sought to capture the vernacular in their fiction. Allen has been described as "Kentucky's first important novelist."
Allen was born near Lexington, Kentucky, and his youth there during the Ante-bellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction periods heavily influenced his writing. He graduated from Transylvania University in 1872, delivering the Salutatorian address in Latin. In 1893 Allen moved to New York City, where he lived until his death. He was a contributor to Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and other popular magazines of the time. Allen is buried in Lexington Cemetery.
At the northern edge of Gratz Park in Lexington is the "Fountain of Youth", built in memory of Allen using proceeds willed to the city by him.

Excerpt
Slowly on Morningside Heights rises the Cathedral of St. John the Divine: standing on a high rock under the Northern sky above the long wash of the untroubled sea, above the wash of the troubled waves of men.
It has fit neighbors. Across the street to the north looms the many-towered gray-walled Hospital of St. Luke-cathedral of our ruins, of our sufferings and our dust, near the cathedral of our souls.
Across the block to the south is situated a shed-like two-story building with dormer-windows and a crumpled three-sided roof, the studios of the National Academy of Design; and under that low brittle skylight youth toils over the shapes and colors of the visible vanishing paradise of the earth in the shadow of the cathedral which promises an unseen, an eternal one.

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